West Indian green soup or Calaloo

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Green soup is known for its detoxifying qualities, especially after a holiday season when you ate a lot of food in a short period of time. It is therefore a very popular soup in January after the two consecutive New Years Eve parties. It is a soup that you will also find under the name of Calaloo soup in the other islands of the Caribbean. You can serve the soup with toast rubbed with garlic, rusks or toast. Grated cheese can also be a wonderful accompaniment to your soup.

Ingredients

For 6 persons:

  • 300 gr of Christmas ham (bacon, salted beef or shrimps)
  • 2 large carrots
  • 1 leek
  • 200 gr of giraumon (turban squash or pumpkin)
  • 1 stalk of celery
  • 1 large country turnip (or 2 French turnips)
  • 1 bouquet garni (parsley, cives, thyme)
  • 1 bouillon cube
  • 2 vegetarian peppers or a whole West Indian pepper
  • 600 gr of grass (spinach, purslane, zerbaj' or Madeira leaf or dachine leaf). In countries where pastures are more difficult to find, you can also use spinach, watercress, chard leaves, leek greens or turnip tops.
Preparation
  1. Start by washing and then peeling the vegetables (carrots, giraumon, turnips, leeks and celery)
  2. Cut them into small pieces.
  3. Wash the bouquet garni and roughly chop the local onion (cive) and parsley.
  4. Detach the herbage leaves from their stems, wash them thoroughly and roughly chop them.
  5. Cut the ham into medium sized pieces (approximately 1 cm squares).
  6. Melt the stock cube in a liter of hot water.
  7. In a large saucepan, arrange the vegetables and leaves.
  8. Place the ham pieces on top and cover with the bouillon cube.
  9. Add the whole West Indian pepper or the chopped vegetarian peppers. (Do not cut the West Indian pepper).
  10. Cook over medium heat and cover the pan for 45 minutes without piercing the pepper.
  11. Stir from time to time during cooking.
  12. After 45 minutes, remove the soup from the heat.
  13. Remove the thyme sprigs and the chili from the mixture.
  14. Leave the ham (or bacon) there. If you opted for the beef or shrimp, remove them at the same time. Feel free to add water if necessary.
  15. Grind the soup a little using a hand mixer or a blender in too much exaggeration because you must have pieces. Zhabitant's soup is not a soup!
  16. Return the soup and meat to the saucepan, adjusting the seasoning with salt and pepper to taste.
  17. Cook for another 15 minutes.
  18. It's ready !